Unlocking the Vault #16: A Delver Primer

Posted on January 17, 2012 by enderfall

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  2. I’ll put forward my opinion on this. I’m not convinced that Classic (or even Legacy) decks ought to be spending card slots on French vanilla (at best) 3/2s. It just seems so underwhelming a clock for a format with Yawgmoth’s Will.

  3. AJ- From my experience with Eternal formats, I think Delver decks try to play the attrition game and just add more clocks. You know how pathetic Classic and Legacy seem after both players have dumped out all of their top-tier disruption and threats; the games slow to a crawl of topdecking situational cards. But you’re right that a 3/2 looks anemic versus Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or many of the creatures in Shop.

  4. It would appear that a 3/2 with not real “ability” is far to small to make an impact, but there are several factors that come in to play:

    1. Classic (and Legacy to a certain extent) has quite a few cards that are present in nearly every deck that actively trade off for life and thus each player doesn’t realistically start at 20 life in the traditional sense. Force of Will, Fetch lands, Misstep, Mana Crypt/Vault, Ancient Tomb, Dark Confidant, Vampiric Tutor… these are all cards that nearly every deck will play at least one or in most circumstances, many more. That makes a 3/2 no longer a 7 turn clock, but often 5 turns or less, without any other help.

    2. It’s casting cost helps support the cards in the rest of the deck. Having a CC of 1 means that outside of turn 1 (if in fact played turn 1) your deck that is full of spells has the ability to cast a creature and a spell on most turns. This might not be the case too often in a deck filled with 2 CC creatures in a format rampant with Wastelands and Strip Mine. Imagine a creature that said this: 1U, Summon a 1/1 creature that during upkeep look at top card, if it’s a instant/sorcery, you may reveal it to flip card into a 3/2 Flying Insect; When this creature enters the battle field, choose an opponent. At the begining of target opponents next end step “Brainstorm”. Would that not be the best creature ever printed? Effectively, that is what Delver does in most instances, but with the cost of two cards, instead of one. Snapcaster Mage only amplifies this effect allowing you to flashback all those same spells that make Delver “work”.

    3. VERY few creatures in Classic have flying.

  5. Correction, the casting cost would be UU in the above example, but I’m sure you get the point.